Features

Jack Mark remembers the hot summer days when he was a kid in theworking class neighborhoods on the south side of Milwaukee. The depression of the 30’s was in full swing; hand-me-down shoes were a way of life, flying was something limited to the super-wealthy, and an afternoon at a city park was considered a […]

Join AVweb’s team at OSH ’98! Are you an aviation enthusiast and reasonably sharp computer graphics typethat’d like an expense paid working vacation to OSH for 8-9 days? Ourgraphics guy just bailed on us as a result of a family crisis and we’dlike to have someone competent to do this work for us at OSH […]

It’s like the tattooed biker my Mom always warnedme to avoid. “It’s for your own good,” she would say. “Something like that will only bring you grief.” MaybeDelmar Benjamin’s mother never told him to stay away from thingsthat would hurt him. Or, maybe she did and he just wasn’t listening. Benjamin is a lanky blond […]

One of the exciting things about the EAAAirVenture Oshkosh is meeting some of the old timers of experimental aviation such as KenFlaglor. Flaglor, now 72, holds “court” at the communications building atWittman Regional Airport during the flying and has done so at all the EAA conventionsexcept two, the very first and the convention in Milwaukee […]

Listen to a RealAudiofeed of today’s 4:00 welcoming ceremonies at the West Ramp. “Delta wing with the long nose on the downwind, rockyour wings”. Captain Max Robinson and his crew landed a British Airways supersonicConcorde at AirVenture Oshkosh at 1224 Friday. They were about an hour later than theirscheduled arrival because of delays leaving JFK. […]

Cirrus Design of Duluth, MN announced today at Oshkoshthat they have completed the FAA-required airframe parachute deploymenttests. These tests have proven to the FAA that the airplane iscapable of being dropped safely to the earth at about 26 fps fromlow speeds, high speeds and even spins. The unique parachute recoverysystem, developed for Cirrus by BRS […]

CessnaVice Chairman Gary Hay seemed upbeat Friday morning as he told a gathering of journalistsat EAA Headquarters that business is very good, and that the growing demand for generalaviation airplanes seems to be benefiting Cessna more than others. Part of this is due toCessna’s return to building single-engine piston airplanes. With all five announcedsingle-engine models […]

Flight schools have always experienced a substantially higherdrop out rate than almost any other educational endeavor. Thisproblem has plagued the entire aviation community for as longas I can remember, and, believe me, that’s one very long time.We can speculate as to the causes for this phenomenon foreverwithout reaching any firm conclusions. Basically, there are twokinds […]

Recent reporting by AVweb and other aviationpublications illuminating the Civil Air Patrol’s (CAP) participationin Operation Drop-In and related anti-drug efforts by the federalgovernment has highlighted a fundamental shift from the CAP’straditional primary mission, search and rescue. No longer isthe organization’s central focus on its role as the auxiliaryto the U.S. Air Force but, increasingly, it […]

Fair warning! I’m actually going to say some very nice things about the FAA in this column. If you don’t like this sort of thing, skip this column and comeback for the next one. Yes, yes, I’m of sound mind (well, as much as I ever am), and I am not being coerced, this is […]